A mobile cooler or portable ice chest is most commonly an enclosed insulated structure used to keep food and drink stuffs cool for periods of time away from a main refrigerated area. Typically ice cubes or some other frozen medium are placed inside the insulated structure to provide the cooling means. They are usually made from interior and exterior plastic shells with insulating foam in between and come in various sizes. Portable coolers are a useful piece of equipment for many outdoor activities. One (1) problem with traditional coolers having a single storage compartment is cross contamination during certain activities which requires different coolers each dedicated to a different task. One (1) such activity is fishing, in which there is normally a cooler for food, a cooler for drinks, a cooler for bait, and perhaps a cooler for holding caught fish. The use of multiple coolers is often necessity to prevent cross contamination between food and other items. This means that multiple coolers must be packed, transported, and carried to the activity site whether they are completely filled or not. Other disadvantages to traditional coolers are that some items may need to be maintained at different cooled temperatures to prevent spoilage, some items may need to remain dry, and levels of desired freshness are not always the same.
Various attempts have been made to provide improved portable cooler devices, which can be seen by reference to several U.S. patents. U.S. Pat. No. 3,591,194, issued in the name of Vega, describes an ice chest cart that allows access to different storage compartments. U.S. Pat. No. 4,286,440, issued in the name of Taylor, describes a compartment cooler having a central compartment for food and multiple outer compartments for beverage bottles. U.S. Pat. No. 6,474,097, issued in the name of Treppedi et al., describes a compartmented mobile cooler having an ice cooler portion and a thermos container portion.
While these devices fulfill their respective, particular objectives, each of the prior examples suffers from one (1) or more of the aforementioned disadvantages. Accordingly, there exists a need for a means by which a single cooler system can serve the needs of independent items. The development of the present invention substantially departs from the conventional solutions and in doing so fulfills this need.